has partnered with Hitachi to offer high speed communication lines between New York and London.

The new lines will allow more ATM and Internet provider (IP) transactions to be carried and should in the process also speed up transactions.

Global Crossing is expected to implement the service on their North American network in the third quarter of this year.

Global Crossing's advancements in wavelength and bandwidth are being combined with Hitachi's new Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexer (DWDM) to provide the greatly increased capacity and speed.

"In today's competitive communications services market, we need maximum flexibility, low cost, and the ability to turn up new services immediately,'' said Jim Watts, Global Crossing's director of Transmission Engineering for Global Crossing North America.

"Global Crossing operates the world's most advanced IP network,'' said Tom Collington of Global Crossing International.

"In addition to maximising our utilisation of bandwidth, Hitachi's Transmux product is ideal as a gateway in a multi-national environment because of its ability to automatically recognise and transmit signals.''